In the best tradition of legal advocacy: a penetrating analysis; a moral appeal that addresses rather than dismisses...
The nation’s leading cyberlaw scholar denounces “copyright extremism” and boldly re-envisions intellectual-property law for the digital age.
The Recording Industry Association of America is suing more than 17,000 people for illegal music downloads. A young mother had home movies of her dancing baby removed from YouTube because the distant background music by Prince triggered legal threats from Universal Music Corp. The growing ranks of artists using sampling or remix techniques to combine existing music and images into new creative works must choose between trespassing on other artists’ copyrights and a prohibitively expensive quest for clearance. Copyright infringement is overcriminalized, argues Lessig (Law/Stanford Univ.; Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, 2006, etc.), and in consequence is creating a generation of unrepentant scofflaws: young people used to acquiring music and movies with Napster and other file-sharing programs. They feel that copyright law makes no sense, and it is eroding their overall respect for the law. Lessig calls for sweeping changes to the archaic and industry-favoring copyright code: shortening the protected time period; decriminalizing noncommercial copying and file-sharing; and allowing remix artists to copyright their finished work. Alternatively, he promotes a new type of license, available free from a group he helped found called Creative Commons, which helps artists easily give away or sell their work, especially digitally, with “some rights reserved.” Finally he shows how Web practice has vastly outpaced the legal code, contending that corporate culture must adapt in order to take full advantage of this powerful new economic engine. Case in point: the teenage webmaster of a Harry Potter tribute website and chat room, who defended her site from an assault by Warner Bros.—and convinced the film company’s lawyer that her members were providing free marketing, not diluting the Potter brand.
In the best tradition of legal advocacy: a penetrating analysis; a moral appeal that addresses rather than dismisses commercial concerns; and a concrete, commonsense call to action that anyone with Internet aspirations needs to hear.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59420-172-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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